U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola visits Nome

Ben Townsend
Mary Peltola, welcome back to KNOM.

Mary Peltola
Thanks, Ben. Great to be here.

Ben Townsend
Last time I spoke with you, you were representing Alaska in the House. You were coworkers, if you will, with Senator Dan Sullivan, and now you're running against him. Why?

Mary Peltola
Yes, we worked very well together for two years, and Alaska has such a small delegation. There were just three of us, and out of 50 states, only six have just three members of their federal delegation. And Alaska would be the 18th largest country in the world if we were our own country. So, so many pressing needs in all regions of the state.

I'm really proud of the tradition that Alaska has of having a delegation that works together regardless of party, and that certainly was the case in the 118th Congress. This is now currently the 119th Congress that's finishing up this cycle, and this has been a completely different scenario. Once this new administration came in, and and I was really proud of the work that the senators and I did standing up to the Biden Administration on many many things, almost once a week really, on initiatives and executive orders and legislation that did not work well with Alaska or certain regions of Alaska, and you know that really is the job of every member of our federal delegation is to work with, or explain, or fight things that whoever the president is is pushing.

When I left, and have had a year to reflect on the things that were experienced in those two years, so much has changed. It started out in this administration with clawing back public media, and I don't need to tell anyone listening to this program how life and death radio is across Alaska. And it's more than that. It's how we find out if it's legal or illegal to fish. It's the only real time news we have across our state. That was very interesting. And not only was it, you know, the current year or going forward, it was clawing back money that had been promised. At the time I just thought, wow, Don Young and Ted Stevens must be rolling over in their graves because they started this whole network of public broadcasting in Alaska. That's just so such a amazing system.

And then right after that, we had the DOGE cuts. Half of Alaska's economy is contingent, is really dependent on federal spending, and the percentage of the staff that we have working at the federal agencies. 60% of the land in Alaska is federal land. Many of us live in places where we're completely surrounded by federal land, and we need those employees. We need those federal agencies as partners, and they're just integral to Alaska.

Ben Townsend
What is Dan not doing?

Mary Peltola
Oh, and I can go on and on. In just those two things alone in the first couple months of 2025, he didn't say a peep. He has done nothing to stand up for Alaskans, despite these really terrible things that have been damaging.

And then we had the Big Beautiful Bill as one of the names, HR 1, the rescission package. And now Dan Sullivan is calling it the Alaska Opportunity Act, and this is deeply offensive to me because that act, which he voted for, kicked 10,000 Alaskans off Medicaid. A third of Alaskans depend on Medicaid, and that's now very much in jeopardy. A lot of that funding is just gone. Many, many Alaskans across the state have had double or triple costs for health insurance with the ACA [Affordable Care Act] tax credits removed. Tons of people, 1,000s of people in Alaska are off of healthcare entirely. We've had five healthcare facilities close – two closed – five are on the chopping block. So, even if you can afford healthcare, can you find a provider to give you that healthcare? Can you get an appointment? Whether it's preventative or immediate.

It just honestly feels like one thing after another. The latest thing that I take exception to is Dan Sullivan has voted for this war in Iran 10 times, driving up our cost astronomically, we were already paying too much. You know, none of us have discretionary income. None of us have set aside money or fluff money, and to go from paying, you know, $5 a gallon to $7 a gallon, and it could be much more for many of our communities. I'm very relieved in this region, the communities have received their fuel barges already. There are regions of the state where they're still waiting for their May barge, so you know things feel really dire. And Alaskans only have three members of our delegation. We need all three of them fighting as hard as they can for Alaskans and working for Alaskans with everyone and anyone. We don't have the luxury of being partisan and keeping things in a partisan frame and vilifying half of the people.

You know, it's a tough political environment because no matter what you you do you kind of enrage half the people, but there definitely are so many things that it's so easy to see as an Alaskan what works for us and what doesn't, and there is no way I could be convinced that cutting public broadcasting, cutting healthcare services across the state, cutting VA benefits, you know, eliminating federal positions, driving up our costs over and over and over.

Just the fact that we saw what happened in Minneapolis with Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, killed in broad daylight. He was carrying a pistol. It's an open carry state in Minnesota, just like Alaska, and this administration came out, not only did they murder him, but they said he was a domestic terrorist and a would-be assassin. I take personal umbrage with that because every time I go to fish camp, I'm loaded for bear because there are bears. I am not either one of those things, and he didn't say anything. The incumbent did not say one thing to defend our Second Amendment rights. It's really just on and on and on.

And when you take a step back, there really is a broad brush issue with corruption in Washington D.C. And I saw it firsthand. Half of our Congress are millionaires or billionaires. That is not reflective of the electorate, and our government was set up to really mirror the people that the government represents. Half of Americans, half of Alaskans are not millionaires and billionaires. Dan Sullivan has tripled his personal wealth with stock trades and insider trading in the last 12 years, I don't know another Alaskan who's tripled their personal wealth. I don't know many Alaskans who talk about personal wealth. We are all struggling not just paycheck to paycheck, but a lot of us are using credit cards to make our ends meet. We don't have a rainy day fund. There isn't a contingency fund.

Dan Sullivan has voted for cuts to FEMA, and nobody needs to be reminded of Merbok or Halong. In many coastal communities, people refer to those as the first storm and the second storm, and who knows, we're all praying to God that we don't have more disasters, but we definitely, in the case of a disaster, we definitely need the funding from the feds that they promised us, and we even saw in Halong where there had been promises made of FEMA funding that they just turned right around, and and Dan is nowhere to be found. He won't even meet with Alaskans.

Ben Townsend
If elected, what were some things that you didn't get to accomplish your first time around in Congress that you would hope to?

Mary Peltola
Now there's a lot of ground to recover. I think it's really important that Congress really gets serious about saying no to allowing stock trading for members of Congress. It’s shocking to me that it's legal for folks in office to do that. I think a lot of Americans are shocked that that's still legal.

I just think that we really need to focus right now on affordability. The tariffs drove costs up. COVID drove costs up. This war in Iran has driven costs up. So we're in a really different place than we were even in 2022 or 2024, just with the acceleration of inflation and how our wages are not keeping up with it. I think that the U.S. Senate, the Alaska delegation, needs to get serious about finding ways to raise people's wages. I think it's a wise thing to do to look at giving incentives to companies who pay their employees better, and then maybe a little bit more tax burden for the companies who don't pay their employees well. If your employees are working full time and still need food stamps, why are you paying the same taxes as the companies that really care about their employees and their retirement?

We really need to get serious about people's access to healthcare costs on prescription drugs, and looking at corporate greed. I think each of us as Alaskans, we find ourselves in monopoly situations, and we find ourselves in situations where we know we're being price gouged, and you see it in every sector.

I think that in 2026, every one of us is feeling crushed by corporate greed. We need a Congress who are not millionaires and billionaires, and for the corporate fat cats, we need a Congress who are regular people who understand the struggles of regular families working to meet those needs, and not who knows what he's working on.

Ben Townsend
We're short on time, so I want to ask one last question. You've spent a lot of time on the road this campaign. After Nome you're going to Savoonga, Gambell, Emmonak, Alakanuk, and Unalakleet. Why have you spent so much time out in the communities and on the road this campaign?

Mary Peltola
Because we have the resources to do it. When you're running for the U.S. Senate, the ability to fundraise is much better. And honestly, Alaskans expect this, and we deserve this. I grew up in a state where Lisa Murkowski, Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens, Don Young, they came to my town, they came to my hub, they go to the villages in the remote places. Alaskans, we only have 750,000 people, and we really do expect to know our candidates, and we expect to know our congressional members. And I think that's a very reasonable expectation.

I was really shocked to find out when I served in D.C. that most people don't expect to meet their congressional members. It's a foregone conclusion, and we get really upset because if you're flying 14 hours to go to Washington D.C. you want to see the folks who are working there for you. So [I’m] happy to do it, and I think it's really important right now, like I said earlier, to really understand the struggles and the situations, and understand at a community level, what infrastructure they need. We all have coastal erosion. We all have riverine erosion. We all have massive infrastructure that's on the precipice of being lost. All of that investment, how do we save that?

And then conversations about community wellness. What kind of things do we need to do to provide communities with the resources so that they can work on their community wellness? How do we make sure that we're listening to people about proposed projects and the permitting system, the regulatory process. Listening to people, what is your definition of tribal consultation? Because every agency has a different interpretation. It seems to be quite arbitrary, but these conversations are the ones that I've been really happy to go out and have, and really just put my listening ears on. And it's much less the politician coming in giving a stump speech. It's more a public servant coming in to find out how can I best serve you.

Ben Townsend
Thanks for spending some of your time here with me, Mary Peltola. Thanks for coming to KNOM.

Mary Peltola
Thanks Ben.